


A Risky Venture

by enoughtotemptme



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Domestic, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Domestic, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Mama!Clarke, Single Parents, Teacher!Bellamy, artist!Clarke, daddy!bellamy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-22
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-10 13:45:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4394228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enoughtotemptme/pseuds/enoughtotemptme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bellamy's son Gus makes a new friend at the playground, and it doesn't take long for Bellamy to realize that he has a big, fat crush on Darcy's mom. A collection of moments following two little families as they become one. Single Parents! AU. </p><p>(Originally a tumblr prompt fic posted with A Light That's Keeping Us Forever; now a multichapter fic of its own.)</p><p>Rating subject to change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right after I posted this fic over in A Light That's Keeping Us Forever, I got some really amazing feedback, and a request to add more. I've decided to give this fic its own space so that I have the freedom to add little moments and scenes in the lives of Bellamy, Clarke, and their kids whenever I'm inspired to do so. That's why I've marked this story as out of ? chapters--it's more of a collection than a linear plot. Anyway, thanks for your understanding, and I hope you enjoy!

Bellamy’s settled at the picnic table next to the playground with a stack of essays to grade. He’s in middle of giving one of his tenth-graders a B+ when something tugs on his sleeve, making his pen skid across the page.

He sighs and looks down. “What is it, bud?”

“Darcy fell down,” Gus tells him solemnly, and that’s when he notices the tiny little blonde peeking around his son’s side. Her round cheeks are pink and tear-stained, but she’s down to sniffles.

“She did?” Bellamy replies, capping his pen. “Any major injuries?”

The little girl––Darcy––looks confused, but Gus nods and points. “Her knee got hurted.”

“Hurt,” Bellamy corrects. “Where are your parents?” he asks the girl, and her face crumples.

When she starts to cry, tiny, gut-wrenching sobs, Bellamy mentally swears and hopes her parents aren’t going to kill him for picking her up. But she can’t be more than three years old, and other than Gus she’s about the cutest thing he’s ever seen, and he’s got to do _something_ in the face of her sad little tears.

“Hey,” he says softly, crouching in front of her and holding out his hands. “It’s okay.”

She hiccups and throws herself into Bellamy’s arms, nearly knocking him on his ass. Once he’s got his balance back, he stands up, rubbing a gentle hand on her back.

“Don’t worry about it, Darcy,” he says. “You can stay right here with us until your parents come.” It’s only feet from the playground, a prime vantage point for watching the kids, and easily seen by frantic parents in search of a missing child.

“Gus, get the first aid kit out, please,” he tells his son, and Gus hurries over to the backpack holding their lunch and the little first aid kit that Bellamy’s learned never to travel without. Gus is adventurous––a little _too_ adventurous for his peace of mind, but his mother told Bellamy that he’d been just the same.

“Let’s get you fixed up, okay?” he says to Darcy, and she pulls her face out of his neck.

“Kay,” she says, rubbing at her eyes. She tries to push away the wispy blonde curls that have stuck to her damp face, and wrinkles her nose when she can’t get them.

Chuckling, Bellamy sets her down on the table and helps fix her hair. “There you go.”

He smiles at her, and she smiles timidly back.

He talks her through cleaning her scraped knee, and though her lip trembles when he uses the antiseptic wipe, she doesn’t cry again. Gus is helping her choose between Captain America bandaids and unicorn bandaids when Bellamy hears a shout.

“Darcy!”

“Mama!” Darcy squeaks.

He turns and sees a woman sprinting toward them, and he notes that Darcy’s the spitting image of her mother.

“Oh my god,” she gasps, shoving past him to grab Darcy’s little shoulders, pat down her arms like she’s checking for injury. “Baby, you can’t scare us like that!” She squeezes Darcy in a hug and lets out a long, shuddering sigh.

“Sorry,” Bellamy says awkwardly. He’s not sorry for helping the little girl, but he is sorry her mother was so obviously frightened. “Gus brought her over when she fell, and she didn’t know where you were.”

“No,” she sniffs, straightening up. Her golden hair is falling out of a braid, and one piece is tickling right above her mouth where he notices a little beauty mark. “Thank you. My mom was supposed to be watching her while I went to the bathroom, but then she had to take a call, and she lost track of her, and I’ve been going out of my mind for the last fifteen minutes.”

Bellamy opens his mouth to reply, but his son interrupts.

“Daddy fixed her all better,” Gus tells her earnestly. “See? Captain Unicorn.”

She makes little _oohs_ and _ahs_ at the two different bandaids plastered on her daughter’s knee, slightly crooked.

She thanks Gus very seriously for his help, and then hauls Darcy up onto her hip as she turns to Bellamy.

“Thank you,” she says again. “Really. I don’t…” To his horror, her blue eyes grow glassy and she clears her throat repeatedly.

“Please, don’t worry about it,” he says hastily. “I just held onto her until you came for her. No big deal.”

He can’t tell for sure, but he’s pretty positive he’d be as gutted by the mother’s tears as he was by the daughter’s.

She gives him a sincere if watery smile. “It’s a very big deal to me. I’m Clarke,” she adds, and shifts Darcy so she can hold out a hand.

“Bellamy,” he says, shaking it, and then Gus thrusts out his hand for a shake, too.

* * *

When Bellamy’s sister comes over for Sunday night dinner, Gus can’t wait to tell his Aunt O about his new friend from the playground. Bellamy’s stirring the pasta sauce at the stove while Gus chatters away about Darcy, and how she was lost and hurt and they fixed her knee, and then her mommy came and shook Daddy’s hand  _and_ Gus’s hand, and then she kissed Daddy, and then Darcy and her mommy had to go home.

“Wait, back it up, mister,” Octavia says, and Bellamy groans quietly. “Darcy’s mommy _kissed_ your dad?”

“Mm hmm,” Gus replies.

“On the _cheek_ ,” Bellamy says. “It was a thank you type of thing.”

(It was _awesome_.)

Bellamy swears he can _feel_ Octavia smirking at him.

* * *

"Wait, Darcy’s mom’s name is Clarke?” Octavia asks later, over dinner. Gus is  _still_  going on about his new friends. “Blonde, about my age, super hot?”

Bellamy coughs. “Uh, sure. Yeah,” he says, as if he didn’t notice just how attractive Clarke was.

“I know her,” Octavia says. “Darcy’s in my tiny tots class.”

He frowns. “But so is Gus.” He thinks he’d remember seeing either Darcy or Clarke at the kids’ jiu-jitsu lessons his sister teaches.

“Yeah, but he’s in the Tuesday-Thursday group. Darcy’s in the Monday-Wednesday-Friday class,” Octavia explains.

Bellamy makes it a week before he breaks down and lets Octavia know they’ll be switching to the Monday-Wednesday-Friday class.

“Gus wanted to see Darcy again,” he says, defensive.

“Uh huh,” Octavia replies dryly.

* * *

“Hi,” he says lamely when Clarke notices him among the other parents in the waiting area. “Is this weird? Crap, this is weird, isn’t it.”

She blinks, still registering the fact that he’s in front of her, then laughs. “No, it’s fine. Is Gus just starting here?”

He shakes his head and drags his coat off the bench next to him. To his relief, she takes him up on the silent invitation, sitting in the cleared spot.

It’s a popular class, which is why Bellamy had preferred to take Gus to the less busy Tuesday-Thursday sessions. But now he’s grateful the waiting area is so crowded, because the length of her thigh is pressed against his as she squeezes in next to him.

“We switched groups,” he admits. “My sister actually teaches the class.”

Clarke lets out a little ‘oh’ of realization. “Well, Darcy will be excited to see Gus. My dad’s starting to feel replaced as her favorite go-to guy with how much she talks about you two.”

“Your dad? Not her dad?” he finds himself asking, and then wants to kick himself because _jesus_ , can he be any more obvious?

Her eyes go a little soft and sad, and when she says, “Mine. Her dad passed away before she was born,” Bellamy wants to pretty much punch himself in the face.

“Sorry,” he mumbles. “I didn’t––I shouldn't have asked.”

“It’s alright,” Clarke says, nudging him with her elbow until he meets her eyes. She makes a show of looking down at his bare left hand, then back at him. “But fair’s fair.”

“Sole custody,” Bellamy explains. “She wasn’t interested in being a mom.”

Clarke hums and looks through the observation window. Darcy and Gus are giggling wildly as Octavia leads the group through a tumbling exercise. “Too bad,” she says. “He seems like a pretty great kid.”

“So does she,” Bellamy says, and when she beams at him he doesn’t even try to tell himself that he doesn’t have a huge, fat crush on Darcy’s mom.

* * *

They sit next to each other during the kids’ jiu-jitsu lessons for the next three weeks, and Bellamy learns that she does art therapy at the same hospital where her mother is a surgeon, and she has a little house about a five minute drive from his, and Darcy just turned three.

He tells her about Gus, that his full name is Augustus, that he turns five in a couple months, and that until she died last year, his mother used to watch him while Bellamy taught at the high school. Now it’s a mix of preschool, his sister, and babysitters that allow Bellamy to go to work.

“My dad’s retired,” Clarke says. “He usually watches Darcy when I’m working. If you ever need someone to take Gus, I’m sure he’d love to have him.”

“Oh,” Bellamy says. “Uh, I don’t know if––”

“If you wanted to do a trial run, he could watch Gus and Darcy on Friday after tiny tots,” she continues as if he hadn’t spoken. “I already checked, and he said he would.”

“Yeah?” he says slowly, so he doesn’t stumble over his words like an overexcited fourteen-year-old. “What would, uh, we do?”

“I like frozen yogurt,” she says hesitantly, and he can’t keep himself from kissing her for one second longer.

When he pulls away, sooner than he wants to but later than he should have, given that they’re surrounded by other parents in a crowded room, she looks a little dazed.

“Sounds perfect,” he says, and this time, she’s the one who kisses him.

* * *

When Bellamy and Clarke go to pick up the kids from the Griffins’ house at the end of their fifth date, both of her parents open the door. Gus is clinging to Abby’s hand, and Darcy is on Jake’s shoulders, a gleeful look on her face as she clutches his hair for balance. Bellamy nearly has a heart attack when she lurches forward at the sight of them, squealing “Bell-me!”

He reaches up and grabs her before she topples off, and only when she’s securely perched on his hip does his heart start to slow down again.

“Hi,” she says, patting his cheek. “Hi Mama,” she adds a moment later.

“Hi, baby,” Clarke replies, her voice highly amused.

“Daddy! We made cookies!” Gus says, and leaves Abby to throw his arms around Clarke’s knees. “We got in trouble ‘cause we ate the dough.”

“Hey, that was supposed to be our secret,” Jake says, winking at Gus.

“Please don’t teach our children to keep secrets from us,” Clarke says dryly, one hand absently carding through Gus’s dark curls, and Bellamy’s stomach does a funny sort of flop at the ease with which she says _our_.

“Thanks for watching them,” Bellamy says, and Abby beams at him.

“Anytime,” she says, but her tone makes it clear it’s more of an order than a suggestion.

* * *

They name their third child Ella.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally, that last line was the end of this fic. Future parts are going to explore the time in between as well as after Ella's arrival. The next one should be out in the next day or so! Thanks for reading, and let me know your thoughts!


	2. Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one was influenced by an anonymous ask: “Dad!Bell and his kid who is afraid of the dark.”

At first, Bellamy’s not sure what wakes him up. It’s still dark, and he can hear the heavy patter of rain hitting the window, so the storm’s still going on. He groggily thinks that he’s glad he insisted that Darcy and Clarke not drive home when it started to pour; he had barely been able to see ten feet in front of his house when the rain began to come down, and the thought of Clarke trying to drive herself and her daughter through the mess had terrified him.

The two had come over for dinner with him and Gus, something they’d started to every Friday after the kids’ tiny tots class. He and Clarke haven’t been dating long, only about a month, which when you both have kids under five feels both like nothing and like an eternity.

It feels like nothing because it’s easier to be with Clarke than he imagined possible, to combine their tiny families into something bigger and wonderful, and it seems like a decade could pass in a blur of happiness if he’s not paying careful attention.

It feels like an eternity because this is the first night he’s gotten her in bed, and it was with the rueful understanding that nothing was going to happen tonight. It’s the first time Darcy’s slept away from home anywhere other than at her grandparents, and it’s the first time Gus has gotten to have a friend sleep over in the other bunk. Bellamy and Clarke had agreed that the likelihood of one of their children walking in on them in the middle of the night was too great to chance, at least this first night.

Bellamy’s nearly drifting back to sleep when he hears the sound, and realizes what must have woken him up.

“Bell-me…”

He cracks open an eye at the little whisper to see Darcy standing at the edge of the bed, blonde curls sticking up every which way, Gus’s dinosaur pajamas hanging off her tiny limbs.

“Hey,” he whispers back, trying not to wake Clarke. He can still hear her even breathing on the other side of the bed. “What’s up, buttercup?”

Darcy’s bottom lip juts out in the stubborn pout she always makes when she’s trying not to cry. “It dark.”

Bellamy frowns, because it had been dark when they had put the kids to bed, and Darcy had been fine. Then he hears the low rumble of very distant thunder and realizes. Sure enough, when he tries to switch on the bedside lamp, the power is out.

The nightlight in Gus’s room would be out, too.

“The storm must have made the electricity go out,” Bellamy tells her quietly, carefully shifting out of bed. She holds her hands up immediately when he gets to his feet, and he pulls her up into his arms. He grabs the emergency flashlight from the nightstand drawer, but waits to click it on.

“I scared,” Darcy admits in a small voice. “Don’t like it dark.”

Bellamy eases the bedroom door shut behind them when he makes it to the hall. “But you were brave to come find us. Brave princess.”

She fists a hand in his t-shirt and rests her head against his collarbone. “Gus is s’eeping.”

Bellamy peeks into the boy’s room just in case, and he can hear the rhythmic gusts of breath as his son sleeps. He’d been so excited about getting to sleep on the top bunk. He usually had to sleep on the bottom bunk, he’d heard Gus explain solemnly to Clarke while he found some clean pajamas for Darcy.

“‘Cause I’m still little, even though I’m a big boy,” Gus had told her, and she’d nodded.

“Of course.”

“But Darcy’s littler,” Gus had added. “So I get to sleep on the top bunk tonight, so she doesn’t fall off.” Bellamy had installed the guardrail when he’d put the bunk bed together for Gus, so there was little chance of anybody ever falling off the top bunk, but Gus was excited by the prospect of danger.

“Thank you for looking out for Darcy,” Clarke had told him. “You’re a good friend.”

Gus had looked a little embarrassed until Clarke ruffled his hair with a smile, and suggested he and Darcy pick out a book for a bedtime story.

“Bell-me?”

Bellamy sets down the flashlight for a second, reaches out and tugs the Black Widow comforter up so it covers Gus’s flung-out limbs. He’d picked out one Black Widow bed set and one Captain America one when Bellamy had let him choose.

“Yeah?”

“I gotta go.”

Bellamy grabs the flashlight again. “Where, princess?”

“I gotta go potty,” she repeats as if he’s the dumbest grownup alive, which—he’s sleep-deprived, okay, he’s not operating at full steam.

“Oh.” He totes her down the hall to the hall bathroom, and finally clicks on the flashlight and sets it on the counter like a lantern so the room glows with a dim light. Bellamy sets Darcy down on the rug so her feet don’t get cold, then crouches down in front of her.

“Do you need help?”

“I big girl,” she tells him, little hands shoving ineffectually at his chest. “P’ivacy, Bell-me.” Bellamy stifles the laugh that wants to bubble out at the sound of her words, so clearly parroted from Clarke.

“Privacy, got it,” he says instead, and waits for her in the hallway. Soon enough, the toilet flushes and he hears the grating screech of the kiddie stepstool being dragged over to the sink.

At least Clarke’s instilled good hygiene into her daughter, he muses, though he wouldn’t have imagined anything less.

When Darcy calls his name through the door, he eases it open to see her waiting expectantly.

“Hi.”

He smiles. “Hi, Darce.” Her hands are drippy, but clean, and her pajama top is stuck, tucked into the waistband of her pants. He’s learned over the past month that when she’s somewhere she feels at home, she’s fiercely independent, and it makes him grin like a fool to see her so confident in his own little house.

“What are you thinking?” he asks, offering his hand. She curls her fingers around three of his, and he grabs the flashlight. “You getting sleepy yet?” God knows he is, but he won’t be able to fall back asleep until he knows both kids are safe in bed.

Her lip does the trembly pout thing. “It dark,” she reminds him.

Bellamy thinks for a minute, then starts leading her toward the kitchen. “Don’t worry, princess. I think I’ve got some emergency nightlights.”

“Emmerjenny?”

“Yup. Let’s see,” he says, pulling open the junk drawer. Darcy makes a curious sound and he takes a second to plop her on the counter so she can watch as he digs.

“What that?”

“A candle,” he says, but he discards it because there’s no way in hell he’s leaving a candle burning in his children’s room overnight.

“What that?”

Bellamy stifles a sigh. “A screwdriver.”

“What that?”

“A rubber band ball.”

“What that?”

“A— thank god,” Bellamy says. “It’s an emergency nightlight, is what it is.”

There are a handful of them, all shoved to the back of the drawer, and he checks all of the battery-operated candles leftover from Halloween to make sure they’re working.

He flicks the switch and hands one to Darcy. She cradles it carefully in her palms, the glow lighting up her face as she beams.

“Emmerjenny!”

Bellamy laughs and hoists her onto her hip. “Keep hold of that, okay? It’s your new nightlight.”

“Kay,” Darcy replies, now content. Bellamy leaves one nightlight on the counter, in case Clarke wakes up and needs to get a glass of water or something. He deposits another on the bathroom counter in case another kid needs to go potty, and brings another to put in the bathroom attached to his room.

When they get to Gus’s room, Gus is still asleep, though the Black Widow blanket is kicked down around his feet again. Bellamy lowers himself to sit on the bottom bunk, ducking so his head doesn’t hit the top one, and Darcy readily crawls off him to nestle down in the Captain America comforter.

She’s holding onto the flameless candle like it’s the best present she’s ever gotten, so he grabs the last spare and turns it on, setting it on the little nightstand next to the bed. Darcy puts hers on her pillow and beams at him.

“Emmerjenny,” she whispers, and he smiles back, smoothing a hand over her hair.

“Yeah, princess. Emergency nightlight. You all good now?”

She considers it, then nods; he tucks the blanket more firmly around her body and leans down to give her a kiss.

“Okay. Sleep tight, Darcy.”  

“I love you,” she peeps from her bundle of blankets, and in spite of his growing exhaustion, Bellamy’s heart feels like it’s breaking and mending all at once.

“I love you too,” he says, and can’t resist pressing one more kiss to her forehead.

* * *

He leaves the last flameless candle on his own bathroom counter, then tries to slip quietly into bed.

But Clarke shifts and yawns as he gets settled. “Everything okay?” she asks sleepily.

Bellamy turns his head so he can see her. Her hair is a disaster, and she’s keeping her eyes closed. “Power’s out, a kid had to pee. I took care of it.”

“Kids are good?”

“Kids are good,” he confirms, and she makes a little sound of approval.

Then she shifts closer to him until he can smell the citrusy shampoo she uses, and her hand tangles into the fabric of his shirt when she rests her cheek against his arm.

Bellamy thinks he could get used to the Griffin girls doing that.

* * *

Miraculously, he and Clarke wake up before the kids, and they have a few moments in the kitchen to make out before they’re interrupted. The clock on the microwave is blinking zeros, so at least the power’s back on, and when Bellamy opens the fridge it’s obvious that everything stayed cold enough.

Darcy’s the first one into the kitchen, though Gus is right on her heels.

“Hi!” she chirps when she sees them.

“Hi Daddy,” Gus says. “Hi Clarke.”

“Hey, squirts.”

“Good morning, Gus,” Clarke says. “Good morning, Darcy. Do you two sleep well?”

“I had a dream that dinosaurs chased me,” Gus tells her enthusiastically as he drags a chair out from the table in the breakfast nook, then climbs up onto the seat. “A longneck gived me a ride to the top of a tree!”

“That was very helpful of her,” Clarke says as she helps Darcy into one of the other chairs. “What was the dinosaur's name?”

Gus thinks about it. “Ninjatank.”

There’s a long pause that makes Bellamy look up from mixing the pancake batter to see Clarke trying valiantly not to laugh.

“Cool,” she says finally, voice strangled, and Bellamy grins at her.

She rolls her eyes back and then looks down at her daughter. “What do you got there, baby?”

Darcy’s cradling the little flameless candle, apparently having toted it out to the kitchen with her.  

“It a emmerjenny nightlight,” Darcy informs Clarke, and he sees Clarke bite in a smile.

“Is that so?”

“Bell-me gave me.” Clarke presses a kiss to Darcy’s curls, and then another to Gus’s bird’s nest; Bellamy has to remind himself to start pouring batter onto the griddle pan.  

“Bellamy took care of you last night, huh?”

“I love him,” Darcy says matter-of-factly, and his heart apparently isn’t finished doing that weird thing from earlier, because it does it again, and then _again_ when Clarke looks up at him like she’s about to cry or something.

He swallows hard, and Clarke gives him a watery smile. “Yeah, he’s pretty great, isn’t me?” she says to Darcy, though her eyes don’t leave his for a long moment. Then she turns to Gus with a grin. “And so are you!” She squeezes him in a hug until he giggles, and Bellamy tells himself it’s the heat of the stove making his eyes water.


	3. Part Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spooky prompt from anonymous on tumblr: "Bellarke taking the kids trick or treating maybe and the kids decide to wear costumes that go with each others. Like maybe a tiny Artemis and Apollo."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not an Artemis/Apollo costume, but I hope you enjoy.

Gus had been sick with a cold earlier in the week, and up until yesterday Bellamy was still debating whether or not he should go trick-or-treating. But Gus had begged to be able to wear the costume Bellamy had made for him and go trick-or-treating with Darcy, and he hadn’t had a fever for five days, and he was down to the occasional sniffle.

So Bellamy had given in, and now the four of them are eating dinner the night of Halloween, all in costume, and Gus is getting antsier by the second. He’d been too excited about Darcy and Clarke coming to trick-or-treat and spend the night to nap very well, and he’s overtired and overexcited as he bounces in his seat and whines about leaving. 

“Gus,” Bellamy says. “If you don’t sit still and eat your dinner, you won’t get to trick-or-treat at all.”

Gus sets his face in a frown, mutinous, and Bellamy levels a look at his son.

“Come on, Gus,” Clarke says, and squirts ketchup on his plate and Darcy’s in a happy face pattern. “Darcy and I don’t know where to trick-or-treat in your neighborhood. If you don’t go, we might get lost.”

Gus fidgets and huffs, avoiding their eyes like he wants to argue but at the same time is desperate not to be separated from Darcy and Clarke on the funnest of nights, and then Darcy hands Gus a dinosaur chicken nugget to distract him. 

Gus blinks at it, then takes it with a grumpy but passable “Thank you.”

Bellamy shifts his gaze to the tiny witch. “Darcy,” he says, warning. Darcy smiles sweetly and offers another nugget to Bellamy. 

He thinks about telling her that she needs to eat her own dinner and not give it away, but Clarke catches his eye with a wink as she sneaks two more nuggets onto Darcy’s plate. 

“Thank you,” he sighs, and dunks it in ketchup.

“Welcome,” she chirps, and drags her own dino through the sauce before biting off its head with loud sound effects. 

“Hey,” Clarke says, and points to all three of them. “Don’t think I don’t see all of that broccoli still on your plates.”

“They’re trees,” Gus says, brightening a little, because Bellamy has a wonderful and strange kid whose list of top ten favorite foods actually includes broccoli, and he gnaws on the end with glee while Darcy eyes him skeptically.

“Darcy Ann,” Clarke says, warning, and with a gusty sigh, the little girl selects a piece and nibbles. 

Bellamy takes care of his own vegetables with considerably less fanfare than the children, and finally fully fed, they all assemble by the front door.

“Wands?” he asks.

“Check!” they chorus. Bellamy’s mildly concerned that Gus is going to put someone’s eye out when he waves his, but at least they’re all accounted for. 

Darcy’s hair has been brushed out until static cling has it in a bushy cloud of curls around her head, and Clarke had used her own makeup to craft a lightning-shaped scar on Gus’s forehead. The black lensless glasses keep slipping down his nose.

Clarke’s wand is tucked behind her ear, her hair up in a messy bun, and she’s wearing Spectra-Specs and a necklace of bottlecaps; he’d been roped into the group costume, but he’d gotten away with claiming James Potter, which basically required no effort on his part other than to put on his glasses and the wizard’s robes he’d sewn according to Clarke’s directions.

“Bell-me!” Darcy says, and tugs on his robes. “Gotta trick-or-treat!” 

“We’re going to, Miss Bossy,” Bellamy teases, and picks her up. Darcy frowns at him, and taps his head with her wand. 

“I not bossy,” she insists, and wriggles to get down again. “I Hermione!”

“My mistake,” he soothes, and straightens her robes and the time-turner necklace around her neck. “You’re a very good Hermione.”  

“And you’re a very handsome Harry Potter,” he hears, and turns to see Clarke kneeling in front of Gus, brushing his messy hair away from the fake scar. She licks her thumb, then wipes away a leftover smudge of ketchup from his chin, and Gus beams at her.

“You’re handsome too!” he tells her, and Bellamy grins. Blake boys are always suckers for the Griffin girls. 

“Thank you, Mr. Potter,” Clarke says with a soft smile, and kisses both kids’ cheeks with a loud smacking sound before she stands up. “Now, what are the rules?”

“No wunning,” Darcy says sadly, and Bellamy bites back on a smile. 

“No running,” Clarke repeats sternly. “What else?”

“Um,” Gus says. “Hold hands?”

“That’s a good one,” Clarke agrees, “especially when we’re crossing the street. But when you two go up to the houses together, you don’t have to. Your candy might get too heavy to carry with just one hand.”

Gus looks at him, wide-eyed with delight, and Bellamy ruffles his hair.

“What else?” Bellamy prompts when the two start to bounce on their feet with excitement rather than pay attention to the adults. “There are some more Halloween rules. What do you say?” 

“Trick-or-treat,” Darcy says, decisive. 

“Yes! And?”

“Manners,” Clarke hints when they just stare back, confused. 

“Thank you!” they shriek.

Clarke grabs her phone, and they both hoist a kid up for a quick picture; it takes a few clicks, but eventually they’ve got one with wide grins and all eyes open. The kids grab their cauldrons for candy, and as he and Clarke watch, Gus holds out his hand to Darcy. She takes it, chattering all the while about her favorite candy and how she’s magic and Gus is magic too, did he know that?

Bellamy turns to look at Clarke, then offers her his own hand expectantly. She looks from it to the kids, then laughs and takes it.

“Alright, witches and wizards,” Clarke declares. “Let’s fly!”

* * *

All goes well for the first half hour, and the kids finally start to slow down as the initial trick-or-treating high wears off. 

“This is nice,” Clarke says, squeezing his hand as they watch the two kids hurry up to a house as fast as they can without being yelled at for running. “I was worried Darcy would be grumpy about not trick-or-treating in my parents’ neighborhood, but she’s good.” 

“Have you heard from them?” Bellamy asks, and she nods.

“Yeah. They say hi, and that they’re going to bring back masks from Venice for all of us. They wanted to know Gus’s favorite color.” 

“Green,” Bellamy replies. Clarke smiles. 

“That’s what I told them.” 

It makes him feel all warm and sappy, that she knows his kid’s favorite color. 

Darcy’s is blue, and Clarke’s is pink, but pink like those tea roses he brought her for her birthday last month, soft and pretty.

“Tell them I hope they’re having a good anniversary trip,” he says. “I know Gus misses them.” 

She looks at him, curious, and he elaborates. “When you were at work last weekend and I made those cookies with the kids, all Gus could do was lament about how he likes making them with Nanabby and Papa better because they have better cookie cutter shapes than we do.” 

Clarke snorts. “Or they let them eat the dough, and  _that’s_ why they like making cookies there better.”

“Still. There were deep emotions tied to that cookie dough,” Bellamy says, and wraps an arm around her shoulders as she laughs.

They take the kids’ hands to cross the street, and start herding them back toward Bellamy’s house. All goes well until they reach the Sinclairs’ house, and Mr. Sinclair opens the door dressed as a zombie with some truly impressive stage makeup. He lets out a roaring groan, holding his hands out as if to catch the kids, and Darcy lets out a little scream and then bursts into tears. 

Before either he or Clarke can respond, Gus pulls back and kicks the zombie in the shin, hard, eliciting a yelp from the engineer-turned-zombie. 

“Don’t scare people!” Gus yells, his own voice wobbly, but insistent. “It’s not nice to make them cry!”

“Gus!” Bellamy calls, strangled, and Gus grabs Darcy’s hand and pulls her back to where he and Clarke are standing. 

Darcy sniffles and wraps herself up in the hems of his and Clarke’s robes, hiding away, and Gus looks like he’s about a second away from doing the same as he keeps glancing back at Mr. Sinclair. 

“Sorry, Mr. Sinclair,” Bellamy says, and the man gives him a wave as he rubs shin. 

“Should have checked through the window to see who it was,” he replies. “Saved the theatrics for the older crowd.”

Bellamy kneels down, and while Darcy climbs into his arms and hides her teary face in his neck, he looks at Gus. Clarke squeezes his shoulder, leaving the kids to him, and moves forward to apologize again to the neighbor. 

“Hey,” he says. “You know we don’t kick or hit people.”

Gus’s bottom lip trembles, and he scoots a little closer, as if he wants to be held too, but is trying to seem like he doesn’t need it. “I know.”

“Then why did you?” 

“He scared her,” Gus replies. “’S’not nice.” 

“Gus.” 

His chin juts out, stubborn. “She’s my Darcy! My respondabilliby.” 

When Bellamy figures out what Gus had tried to say-- _my Darcy, my responsibility--_ his mouth drops open and he blinks. 

“I--” he begins, then breaks off. He’d said that a lot, when he was younger, and telling Octavia she needed to call him if she ever needed a ride home from the parties she wasn’t supposed to be at, or when he’d offer to give her ex-boyfriends talking-tos.  _My sister, my responsibility._ He still says it every now and then, when they’re hanging out after the kids’ tiny tots class or for Sunday night dinners, but it’s more of a joke now than anything and she mostly just rolls her eyes at him. 

He guesses Gus has noticed, and filed the information away until this moment. 

“Yeah,” he says instead. They’ll have a conversation later, about the difference between protective and overprotective, and only protecting someone when they want the help, but he can’t see punishing Gus right now for something Bellamy’s inadvertently taught him. “Yeah, okay. But you still need to apologize to Mr. Sinclair for kicking him, because that wasn’t nice either.” 

Gus droops. “Okay.” He peeks up at Bellamy. “Can you go with me?” 

“Sure.” Bellamy maneuvers himself to his feet, shifts Darcy onto his hip, and takes hold of the hand Gus offers. They go up to the door, where Clarke had been chatting with Mr. Sinclair and his wife while they handed candy to other kids, and Gus shuffles his way in front of Bellamy.

“I’m sorry I kicked you,” Gus says. 

“Apology accepted. I’m sorry I scared you and your sister,” Mr. Sinclair replies easily. “I’ll try not to do that anymore.”

“Kay,” Gus agrees. “Is your leg hurted?”

“Not anymore,” the man says, smiling, and reaches into his bowl of candy. He dumps a handful into Gus’s cauldron, and then another into the cauldron he’s carrying for Darcy. “Here. Happy Halloween.” 

“Happy Halloween,” he and Clarke reply, and the kids both echo it, though Darcy’s is admittedly still muffled in Bellamy’s Gryffindor scarf. 

* * *

After the zombie scare, the kids are pretty much wrung out. He ends up carrying Darcy home from there, with Gus holding onto both his free hand and one of Clarke’s, and Clarke’s stuck carrying the cauldrons of candy. 

Clarke fishes Bellamy’s keys out of his pockets and unlocks the door for them; it’s a short stop in the hall to brush teeth and use the bathroom, and then it’s time to put the kids to bed. He lays Darcy down first, then tucks Gus in while Clarke murmurs a goodnight to her daughter before kissing her hair. They’ve done this so many times already it feels more normal than when it’s just him and Gus in the evenings, and once he’s got Gus settled in the bunk above Darcy, Clarke steps on the bottom rung of the ladder so she can reach the boy for his goodnight kiss.

“Love you, Gus,” she says, and Gus replies with a sleepy “Love you too.” 

“I’ll see you in a minute,” she says, hand on Bellamy’s arm. “Make sure the—”

“The nightlight’s on, yeah.” He kisses her, quick and sweet. “I know.” 

As she leaves, he crouches down, runs fingers through Darcy’s disastrous curls. She’s already knocked out, so he just kisses her forehead and tells her to have sweet dreams.

“Daddy?” Gus whispers as Bellamy straightens, getting ready to put himself to bed. Gus’s eyes are drooping, but they’re fixed on Bellamy’s face.

“What is it, bud?” Bellamy whispers back. He smoothes a hand over his son’s forehead, his hair. The long evening doesn’t seem to have done him any harm in his recovery from his cold. He’s a good temperature, and his hair is damp with kid sweat, but just the it’s-Halloween-and-he’s-excited kind. They can do baths in the morning.

“I’m a wizard.”

The Harry Potter scar is still there, somewhat smudged, but there, and Bellamy smiles. 

“Yeah, you are.”

“And we’re magic?”

“Tonight we are,” Bellamy replies. “Why?”

“I got a wish,” Gus says. “Like Aladdin.” 

“You  _have_ a wish,” Bellamy corrects softly, and Gus nods.

“Yeah.” 

Bellamy considers the pros and cons of explaining the difference between Harry Potter magic and Aladdin magic, and shrugs.

“What’s your wish?” he asks, and Gus yawns hugely. 

“I wanna trick-or-treat with Darcy every single night forever,” he says, eyes sliding shut. “And Clarke, and you,” he adds as an afterthought, turning onto his side to snuggle into his pillow.

Bellamy doesn’t really know how to respond, but Gus is already asleep.

* * *

Clarke’s already in bed, face washed clean and hair let down from the bun when he gets to the bedroom, and Bellamy sheds his costume where he stands. 

She’s warm when he slides under the covers, slipping an arm around her waist, and she makes a small noise of contentment. 

“Gus has a wish,” he says, and Clarke hums. 

“He does? What was it, to eat his candy tonight? Honestly, I’m shocked we got them down without a single piece devoured.”

Bellamy laughs and noses the strap of her camisole off her shoulder. He usually wakes up as the little spoon, so he’s learned to take advantage whenever he gets the chance to be the big spoon. “Me too, but no. He says he wants to go trick-or-treating with Darcy every single night forever. And you and me, he added, but mostly Darcy.” 

“Oh,” Clarke says, soft. “Oh. Damn it. That’s cute.” 

“Yeah. I mean, I don’t know about trick-or-treating every single night forever,” he says, and kisses the spot he bared. “The feasibility is questionable. Neighbors would protest. But I understand the sentiment.”

“Yeah?” she says, and shifts back so she’s tucked closer in his hold. “What sentiment is that? Dressing up and getting free candy is awesome?”

“Well, yes,” Bellamy grants. “But more the every single night forever part, with you, and with Darcy.” 

He understands wanting that part. A lot. 

She stills. “Yeah. Yeah, that sounds pretty nice.”

He just holds her for a while, enjoying the feel of her, and then starts to nibble around her shoulder blade until she squirms. 

“Hey!” 

“You know, Harry Potter was probably conceived on Halloween,” Bellamy says, casual, “if you do the math and take into account J.K. Rowling’s love of coincidence. So at this time in 1979 they were totally getting it on.” 

Clarke pauses, then snorts a laugh, turning to face him. “Well, we won’t be following in the Potters’ footsteps tonight. I was pregnant with Darcy all through the summer, and I think I still need another year or two to forget how utterly miserable I was in the heat.”

His heart kind of trips over itself. “Only another year or two?” he says, mouth dry.

Her cheeks go a little red, and her gaze drops to his chest, where her fingertips rest against his collarbone.

“I mean—not that I—that  _we—_ ” Clarke tries to reply. “I just meant—”

“If I had another kid, I’d want to have it with you,” Bellamy interrupts, voice hoarse. “Is that—please say that’s what you meant too.”

“That’s what I meant too,” Clarke whispers. 

“Thank god,” he replies, and kisses her, deep and slow and until she sighs and melts against him. Then he rolls them over until she’s underneath him, all soft and yielding, and he doesn’t know how he was lucky enough to find her, to find a family with her, and her daughter and his son, but he’s not going to question it. This is exactly where he wants to be.

He kisses her again, and again, then trails kisses down her throat in light, ticklish caresses that make her giggle.

“In another year or two,” she reminds him, laughter going breathless as he grazes his teeth against her clavicle.

“That doesn’t mean we can’t practice,” Bellamy points out, and after a moment of consideration, Clarke hums in agreement and wraps herself around him. 

Yeah. This is exactly where he wants to be.


End file.
